


Meeko

by PanicAtTheEverywhere (DapperMuffin)



Series: Love Ties a Family Together [3]
Category: Sanders Sides (Web Series)
Genre: Adopted Sibling Relationship, Broken Bones, Family, Family Fluff, Hurt/Comfort, Injury, Kid Dark Creativity | Remus "The Duke" Sanders, Kid Deceit | Janus Sanders, M/M, Minor Injuries, Multi, Parent Anxiety | Virgil Sanders, Parent Creativity | Roman "Princey" Sanders, Parent Logic | Logan Sanders, Parent Morality | Patton Sanders, Tree Climbing, falling out of a tree
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-09
Updated: 2020-06-09
Packaged: 2021-03-03 19:53:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,005
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24631102
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DapperMuffin/pseuds/PanicAtTheEverywhere
Summary: Remus hears a sound in a tree and makes a few bad decisions.
Relationships: Anxiety | Virgil/Creativity | Roman/Logic | Logan/Morality | Patton, Dark Creativity | Remus "The Duke" Sanders & Deceit | Janus Sanders, Dark Creativity | Remus "The Duke" Sanders & Everyone, Deceit | Janus Sanders & Everyone
Series: Love Ties a Family Together [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1766695
Comments: 9
Kudos: 99





	Meeko

**Author's Note:**

> trigger warning: falling out of a tree, injury, broken ribs, brief mention of blood, brief mention of knives

“Come on, come on, I wanna climb the tree!” Remus races outside, and when Janus isn’t immediately right behind him, he starts whining. “Come _on,_ Jan!” Janus shakes his head at his brother. Remus has been trying to climb the tree in their backyard for days, but he can never get any traction. Still, he drags Janus behind him every time so he can watch when Remus finally manages to reach one of the branches, which are all far above his head.

“Try not to fall, okay?” Janus warns him. “Last time, vati and baba got super mad.”

Remus stops trying to climb the tree for a moment to smirk at Janus. “Aw, you care about me. You don’t want me to get hurt.” Janus rolls his eyes.

“Hhng.” Remus grunts. “Why can’t I ever _do this?”_

“You need to face facts, Rem, you’re just too short.” Remus whips his head around to glare at Janus, who shrugs nonchalantly. “You might need to wait until you’ve _grown_ a little.” They’re the same age, Janus being only months older than Remus, but that doesn’t stop him from treating Remus like his little brother.

Remus growls. “But I wanna sit in the tree.” He pouts, and Janus can’t help but feel a little bad for him. He ruffles Remus’ hair, but Remus doesn’t seem all that comforted.

Remus straightens up. “Wait, what was that?”

Janus hadn’t noticed anything. “What was wh—” Janus gets cut off suddenly as Remus holds a finger up to his lips.

“Shhh.” His eyes are narrowed in concentration, and Janus listens.

_Meow!_

Huh, there it is. There _was_ a noise the first time that Janus had missed.

“There’s a cat stuck in the tree, Jan!” Remus turns to look at him, eyes wide.

“How do we know it’s in the tree?” Janus asks skeptically.

The cat meows again, and Remus points. “See? The sound is coming from above us! The only thing there is this stupid tree!” He gets a look on his face, one that Janus doesn’t like nor trust in the slightest, and he recalls with clarity the incident that occurred the _last_ time Remus had that expression.

“Well, Remus—” he starts to say, but Remus isn’t listening to a single word he’s saying.

“We have to rescue it!” _Of course._ Remus scrabbles at the trunk of the tree, trying to get a hold, and Janus winces. He’s inevitably going to rip his fingernails doing that.

“What if it doesn’t need help?” suggests Janus. “Maybe it got up there in that tree by itself and it can get down whenever it wants to all on its own.”

“No! Listen to him! He sounds panicked! I have to help him.” Remus _does_ have a point. The cat’s meowing does sound as if it’s bordering on frantic, but—

“He?" _Since when did we know the gender of this cat?_

Remus ignores him, instead heaving a huge sigh as he stops his failed attempts at scaling the tree trunk like a gecko. It’s like he’s actually given up, but if Janus knows one thing about Remus, it’s that Remus is the most stubborn person Janus knows, and he doesn’t give up this quickly.

“Do you… need some help?” offers Janus, expecting Remus to refuse, since he usually hates when other people try to help when he’s determined to do something himself, but Remus gives him a small nod. “Okay, here, let’s see what we can try.” He glances around, but none of the objects strewn haphazardly across the lawn would be of any help. “You could stand on my shoulders? I hate the idea, but if it would be of any help…”

Remus’ eyes grow determined once more. “Yeah, let’s do that!” He’s very clumsy as he uses Janus’ hands as a foothold to get onto his shoulders, and Janus keeps muttering, “Ow,” as Remus keeps stepping on him wrong. “Okay, okay, okay, I can do this.” Even on Janus’ shoulders, the branch is a little too far away for Remus to reach, although it’s mainly a horizontal distance. Remus rubs his hands together, exhales once, and then sort of clumsily leaps for the branch.

One of Remus’ hands manages to grab the branch, but his other is left dangling, and Janus holds his breath as he watches Remus slowly, painfully get a hold on the branch with his other hand and pull himself up onto it. He grins down at Janus with a thumbs-up, and Janus despises how comfortable Remus can be in dangerous situations.

“Be careful,” he hisses through his teeth as Remus stretches to grab the next branch up, which is much closer, but almost slips. Why did he let Remus do this? Why did he help him? Oh, god, what if Remus falls—

Remus has successfully climbed up two more branches, and he gasps.

Janus can’t see him from down here. “What?”

“I found the cat!” Remus’ voice is gleeful, but will this all be worth it? He isn't sure if it will. “I’m gonna come down now.” There’s a moment of silence. “Wait, I’m holding a cat, how do I get down?” Why hadn’t he thought about that _before_ he climbed halfway up the damn tree?

“Okay, hold on, uh…” What’s the best solution? Ideally Remus would’ve put on a backpack before he’d started climbing and he could’ve put the cat in it so that his hands would be free for the climb back down, but that isn’t an option, since the only way for Janus to get a bag up to Remus is to climb up there himself, and he's not that confident in his ability to climb.

“Ow, shit, he bit me, Janus, help, aaaaaaa—” As Remus loses his balance on the branch, Janus makes a split-second decision. The decision itself is _cushion him with your body, because you definitely can’t catch him, and he's holding a cat so he can't catch himself._

Admittedly, it’s a very stupid decision. Not only does Janus have the wind knocked out of him, but a sharp pain blossoms in his side, and his wrist ends up trapped underneath him as Remus falls on top of him. _Wow, that was a great plan, I'm so smart, aren't I? In fact, I don't think I've ever had a_ better _idea._

“Oh my god, Janus, are you okay?” Remus’ face is pale and he seems scared, but he’s holding a fluffy cat and they both appear unharmed. Janus smiles, relieved, but as he starts to sit up, the pain in his side is too much and his eyes start… leaking water? _Oh, right, tears._ “You didn’t have to do that, did you get hurt?” Janus grits his teeth as he nods, and Remus shifts so he’s holding the cat under one arm. It looks silly, but as soon as Janus laughs, he coughs, and he feels the stabbing sensation in his side worsen. “Let me help you.” Remus hooks his arm around Janus’ back and under his arm, and, with his help, Janus is able to stand.

“You’re an idiot.” His voice shakes due to the effort of standing and the energy being sapped from him by the pain.

“I know.” The two slowly make their way into the house, Remus supporting Janus, and as soon as the door opens, Patton sees the state they're in and calls for his husbands.

“I don’t believe you two,” Logan fumes, and Janus winces at the unnecessary amount of pressure Logan’s using to clean the bloody scrape on his hand. “Remus climbed into that tree for a _cat,_ of all things? You know we can’t keep it, Patton’s allergic.”

“What were you thinking?” Virgil tugs at his sleeve agitatedly as he paces. “You didn’t even have a plan on how to get the cat down! And Janus got hurt, he’s got a broken rib!”

“‘M sorry,” mumbles Remus, gaze locked on the ground. “It _was_ stupid, I… I don’t know what I was thinking.” He starts crying, and Roman, standing in the doorframe and out of the way, decides it’s time he stepped in.

“Well, no matter, the damage is already done.” His voice is low but soft, and Remus glances up at him, eyes shiny. “It may have been stupid, but we’ve all done things like that as a kid!”

“Really?” Remus sniffs.

“Yeah! For example, when I was a kid, I fell off the roof and broke my ankle. When Logan was a kid, he tried to reach one of the knives on the kitchen counter, but he was too short and ended up knocking all the knives off the counter, and one of them cut him.” He gestures first to himself and then to Logan as he talks about them.

Logan rolls his eyes. “Why did I tell you of all people that story again?”

“Cause you love me.” Roman grins cheekily, and Logan shakes his head with a fond smile. “And Virgil broke a glass and got some shards stuck in his feet.” Janus wrinkles his nose in disgust. “Even Patton!”

“What did Patton do?” asks Janus. He’s invested in this now, he needs to know. Besides, it’s a welcome distraction from both the pain of Logan treating his injuries and the interrupted lecture.

Roman winks at him. “Don’t tell Patton I told you this, but once he was riding his bike alone without a helmet and he ran straight into a pole. Hit his head and knocked himself out, just like that. So while what you did was stupid and you could have planned better, it’s not worse than what we’ve done in the past.”

“Just don’t do it again. If you need help, come ask one of us.” Logan finishes bandaging Janus’ wrist, lips pursed.

“I thought you’d be mad if we asked for help,” Remus admits.

“Not as mad as we are now,” counters Virgil. “Maybe if you had come to get help, you wouldn’t have fallen out of a tree.” Remus smiles sheepishly.

Patton pokes his head into the room. “Hey, kiddos. Are you feeling any better yet, Janus? Do you need any pain meds?”

Janus carefully flexes his wrist and winces. “I feel a little better, but I would like pain meds.”

“Okay.” Patton nods, but then suddenly tenses. The cat Remus had poorly rescued from the tree rubs against the exposed skin on Patton’s legs below the cuffs of his capris and above his socks. “Um. Guys. I’m allergic, why did you bring it inside?” His voice is strained and his face is carefully blank.

“Shit, hold on.” Roman lunges for the cat, picking him up and scratching behind his ears.

“Language,” Patton says half-heartedly as he studies his skin. His brows are furrowed—he seems confused.

“Is something wrong, Pat?” Virgil asks him.

“I don’t have hives? Usually there would be…” He trails off, but then his eyes widen and he smiles. He scoops the cat out of a surprised Roman’s arms, scratching his chin and laughing as he licks Patton’s fingers. “Guys, I think she’s hypoallergenic!”

“Wait, she?” Janus interjects. “Remus said ‘he.’”

“Well, Remus is wrong.” Patton barely glances up from the cat in his arms as he rocks gently back and forth. “This is a girl cat, and her name is Meeko like the raccoon in Pocahontas because she has stripes that remind me of a raccoon, and we’re keeping her.”

“We are?” Remus jumps to his feet.

“We are.” Patton smiles as a grin slowly spreads across Remus’ face, and he joins Patton to give the cat love.

Virgil shakes his head in mock disdain. “I hope you’re happy. Patton with a pet is a monster. You’ll never get him to stop spoiling that cat, and you’ll never get her away from him.”

Janus looks over again at Patton, who’s cooing at Meeko, and Remus, who’s making faces at her because _look at you oh my god you’re so cute I just can’t_ and decides that, objectively, it must be true.

**Author's Note:**

> i just really love this AU and the characters they're so pure asdhjfdasj


End file.
